A man with terminal cancer moved to Ikaria, in the blue zone of Greece, lived for 3 decades | louder.news

When Stamatis Moraitis was 66, his doctors told him he only had six to nine months to live.
Moraitis, who had spent most of his adult life living in the suburbs of New York and Florida, found himself out of breath, unable to finish a day’s work as before. It’s terminal lung cancer, all his American doctors said.

So the Greek father of three decided to return to his homeland, on the isolated Mediterranean island of Ikaria, with his wife Elpiniki. He didn’t want his family burdened with the thousands of dollars he knew an American funeral would cost. Let me be buried next to my family, by the sea, and where it will only cost my relatives a few hundred dollars, he thought.

But back on Ikaria, the Greek island halfway between Athens and Turkey, something remarkable happened. Moraitis didn’t know it at the time, but he was returning to a unique and isolated place, an island where people usually live past 100. He had entered a Blue Zone.